Monthly Archives: July 2010

The old New Atheist

Atheism, Books, Links, USA

It turns out that Mark Twain wrote an autobiography of his life but decided that it shouldn’t be published until 100 years after his death (which occurred in 1910). Newsweek has posted an excerpt, and it seems like it’s a well timed release.

About once a year some pious public library banishes Huck Finn from its children’s department, and on the same plea always—that Huck, the neglected and untaught son of a town drunkard, is given to lying, when in difficulty and hard pressed, and is therefore a bad example for young people, and a damager of their morals.

Two or three years ago I was near by when one of these banishments was decreed and advertised, and I went over and asked the librarian about it, and he said yes, Huck was banished for lying. I asked,

“Is there nothing else against him?”

“No, I think not.”

“Do you banish all books that are likely to defile young morals, or do you stop with Huck?”

“We do not discriminate; we banish all that are hurtful to young morals.”

I picked up a book, and said—

“I see several copies of this book lying around. Are the young forbidden to read it?”

“The Bible? Of course not.”

…

I can’t wait to do this with the book club (although in the end it will be 3 volumes and half-a-million words).

Curing cynical skepticism 6 – Diversifying the skeptical market

Atheism, Cynical skepticism, Humanism, Scepticism

[This post is part of a week-long series from July 24-30 about issues within the secular community. Also see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.]

After I’ve hopefully identified my chief concern, hypothesis about the issue and presented the first steps to rectifying the issue by building positive-action centred communities (in addition to and not in replacement of the existing organizations), I want to turn my attention to one more concern that should be addressed. This final concern is about diversity.

Hemant Mehta posted a very illuminating picture a few days ago from a Skeptics Conference in 2006.

He asked if we could notice anything “manly or white” about it…

Of course the diversity question is slowly being addressed and people are more willing to talk about it now, but that doesn’t mean our work is done.

Doing the same things and expecting different results is Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity, so it’s well worth recognizing that to appeal to a greater demographic, our events are going to have to be more appealing than to just our current members – predominantly 18-35 year old white males, which, coincidentally, appeals primarily to other 18-35 year old white males.

While finding positive activities to focus on should help, I think we can be even more successful if we work on finding niches that need to be filled.

I’m not claiming my ideals are novel or that none of this is being undertaken. CFI Vancouver is launching a book club under my fiancée and my coordination next month, and the Saskatoon Freethinkers have been pioneering secular parenting in Canada with a Secular Parenting meetup and a Freethinker Family summer camp.

Not every event needs to be about debunking woo or bashing religion or drinking in the pub. We need events for mothers, fathers, singles, women, and children.

Heck, even just having a secular equivalent to Sunday School would allow many parents to come to events who wouldn’t otherwise make it.

These things aren’t hard to do (first-aid training and child care licensing are not difficult to obtain) but are just not always in the minds of people who mainly plan events to fit what they would want to do (something I’ve been guilty of too). On the basis of the increased membership alone, it’s worth at least trying to diversify our appeal.

Curing cynicial skepticism 5 – Building positive communities

Atheism, Humanism, Scepticism

[This post is part of a week-long series from July 24-30 about issues within the secular community. Also see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.]

So far I’ve discussed the issue of non-active atheists and how the cynical skeptics and their tone may keep them from joining and being active in our organizations. Today, I hope to outline some constructive ideas for starting to build these communities.

The benefits of community building that result from collectively bashing religion are not limited to negative activities. It is very possible, and in fact relatively easy to build a community on positive and constructive discussions. There’s a few ways to build such a community, and I think each of them can help a group break out of a funk of deconstructive cynicism.

A great example is that of the Students for Freethought (notice their relatively kick-ass website) at Ohio State University. For two years in a row, their group has paired with a campus Christian group and travelled to New Orleans to help with the ongoing reconstruction efforts since Hurricane Katrina. While not every group needs to pair with Christians, the positive emphasis on charity work and (literal) community building is something I think every secular group out there should emulate.

I also appreciate non-religious groups that participate and support local Pride Parades (Edmonton, Toronto, Vancouver, etc.). It’s great to defend our own community, but the true nobility comes from the solidarity we can show to other minorities who’ve been victim to relentless religious discrimination.

One final thing that I think is of vital importance to establish in BC is a humanist officiant program, mirroring the successful programs in Ontario and several states. These officiants provide guidance and oversee major life events which don’t cease to happen when one leaves their faith. Marriages, deaths and even birth (or naming) ceremonies are already in a large demand for people who don’t want a church service but don’t find a civil / government ceremony to be meaningful enough for them. These ceremonies are a great chance to show how we can use humanism to build communities of like-minded individuals.

Of course there are many, many more ideas and opportunities out there, which all take money and volunteers. The lucky thing is the more services we start to offer and the more people who start to attend and take ownership over the community, the more resources that we will have available.

Harper: Just plain lucky?

Conservatives, Politics, The Peak

I’ve finally written an article for The Peak again. This time I address the long-form census controversy and ask if Harper’s really a great strategist or just a lucky ideologue.

Harper’s success: strategy or luck?
By Ian Bushfield

Many pundits and voters view Stephen Harper as a strategic political mastermind. Since winning the Conservative party leadership he has impressively managed to take a right-wing fringe party to consecutive minority governments. However, after repeatedly failing to win that elusive majority, the evidence is growing that blind ideology often impedes his better judgment.

His latest blunder comes with the growing and near unanimous backlash in his attempt to kill the long form portion of the census. Every five years the federal government conducts a survey of the country in two parts — a short form that is sent to everyone and a longer form that is only sent to one-in-five people. The long form probes deeper than the short form and provides a wealth of information for social welfare groups and policy-makers. Until Harper’s recent decision, both forms were mandatory, but now the long form has been made voluntary.

The rumours out of Ottawa suggest that this decision came directly from Harper himself, likely assuming that a change like this would go widely unnoticed as the political season winds down into the summer. However, statisticians, local governments, social groups, and even religious groups like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada have denounced the action.

In a stunning display of statistical ignorance, to compensate for this break in continuous data, Harper decided that they would send out more voluntary long-form surveys at an estimated cost of $30 million. Perhaps a first-year stats student here can explain to Harper how collecting more shit won’t make it smell any better.

The government’s post-hoc reasoning for such an unpopular course of action is that the mandatory long form is overly intrusive and violates the fundamentals of the freedom to privacy. Neglecting that the freedom to privacy is neither stated nor implied by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it is worth remembering that actions such as filling out the census are important of civic responsibilities, just like jury duty, voting, and paying taxes are. Similarly, Harper has no intention of making the long-form farm census voluntary which provides invaluable information about agricultural techniques. Apparently suburban libertarians are more important than rural ones.

Scrapping the long-form census is more about weakening the information available to progressive social justice agencies across the country than appealing to a very fringe libertarian base. By weakening the continuity of census data, organizations and local governments will be less able to target their services to where they are needed the most. If only those who can afford the time respond, it will be much more difficult for Stats Canada to ensure the robustness of its data from low income and remote communities; the groups most served by such aid organizations.

The census wasn’t Harper’s first mistake as leader. In his blood-lust to kill the weakened Liberal party after the 2008 election, he assumed it would be easy to remove the per-vote party subsidy system, only to find that the opposition parties could agree on enough to form a coalition and threaten to topple his government.

Then, last year he assumed Canadians were too apathetic to care if he prorogued Parliament to avoid answering questions about the torture of Afghan detainees. It must have been quite the surprise when hundreds of thousands of protesters turned up to criticize his three-month Christmas vacation.

So, it seems that perhaps Harper’s only real strategy thus far has been to appear less incompetent than the various Liberal leaders. But with lame ducks like Paul Martin, Stephane Dion, and Michael Ignatieff, should we really be calling Stephen Harper an expert strategist?

Curing cynical skepticism 4 – The wrong spin

Atheism, Humanism, Scepticism

[This post is part of a week-long series from July 24-30 about issues within the secular community. Also see parts 1, 2, and 3.]

I’ve hopefully introduced my main concern in the discussion of the non-active atheists and cynical skeptics and how I think we as a community need to find ways to make them feel more welcome in our groups. Today I want to try to discuss one of the major roadblocks for the non-active atheists for them getting involved in existing groups.

I think the issue is not our overall message. There is a documented, large support base for secular groups in Canada, and especially in BC. The idea of limiting religious influence on government and society is generally popular here, and science still commands a reasonable amount of respect.

The issue that I think is keeping many from joining communities is a matter of communication and appearance.

To put it bluntly, the atheist community (science departments as well) suffers from a bloat of members with varying social deficiencies. We have a number of charismatic speakers (James Randi, Phil Plait) but at the local level, a number of people either forget or do not realize that many people are not won over by a mere resuscitation of facts and logical arguments.

What separates Phil Plait from an IRL internet troll is not an ability to create and use logical arguments, but the skill at which they are applied to discussions with other human beings. Being a douche bag may be very self-satisfying, but when a group is fighting for a broader social change, lacking the ability to actually interact with people is something that just needs to be accepted.

Hell, it’s even scientifically wrong to think that throwing facts at someone will change their mind. People get entrenched in their position and will defend it, no matter how irrational.

Tone matters

Don’t get my message wrong. I support the New Atheist approach to demonstrating that it’s okay to challenge the taboo of belief, but there is definitely a time and place for everything.

An organization that wants to be taken seriously as a community beyond belief needs to conduct itself differently than the members within it. If I want to make fun of religion and be a dick, that’s just fine, but I think larger groups need to be aware of what their audience is.

If we only want to appeal to hardcore, angry, stereotypical atheists, then attacking religion is just fine. But I think if our goal is to attract a larger audience, we need to tread lightly.

Perhaps it means that angry atheist groups and compassionate humanists groups would be more successful apart, but I think until our (active) numbers are much larger, fragmentation represents a reduction in the resources available to any one group.

Curing cynical skepticism 3 – The cynical skeptics

Atheism, Cynical skepticism, Humanism, Scepticism

[This post is part of a week-long series from July 24-30 about issues within the secular community. Also see parts 1 and 2.]

The key concern I’m trying to address with this series is: Why would atheists who generally agree with our positions feel unwelcome at an average skeptics event (based on the various ones that I’ve been to, but likely generalizable to other communities, with exceptions of course)?

I think the issue, and it’s one that I’m as equally guilty of as anyone, comes from the tone and level of discourse at these events.

I’ve found that when you put a group of atheists in a room together who have a general dislike of religion that they tend to get pretty vocal about their dislikes, especially regarding religion. I think it has to do with the liberating feeling of knowing that you can broach a taboo topic like religion and not experience any negative social repercussions. Of course, to those a little less critical (or maybe just vocal about it), these situations can get uncomfortable and will basically appear as a bitch fest where belief is torn to shreds.

So our events tend to get tainted by a cynical skepticism. By cynicism, I’m not referring to a tacit denial of anything out there in the realm of possibilities, but a more negative attitude that can infect a conversation whereby the discussions tend to focus on the problems of irrationality and superstition and can quickly denigrate into all-out dickesh mocking (be sure to read PZ Myers’ The Dick Delusion).

And while I have nothing inherently against being a bunch of dicks and mocking religion (it can often be fun), it doesn’t necessarily accomplish much (at least in the group meeting setting) and potentially represents a threat to a groups longevity.

The other issue with relying on the negative discussions to hold the community together is that it creates a clique. It’s natural to want to talk to and associate predominantly with your closest friends in any group, but the danger lies in the raised bar for entry into the club. Shyer potential members can easily have difficulty engaging in discussions when everyone seems to know everyone else and you’re left on the outside of the room, and less likely to return next time.

Benefits of the cynicism

I should also recognize some of the positives of negative discussions before people get the idea that this entire series is going to be a soft-accomadationist piece about tone (more on tone tomorrow).

For many, a meeting at a campus atheist group is the first time they can actually say aloud that they think religion is stupid (this was especially the case in Alberta). Having that peer group that completely agrees with you, and often encourages you, is helpful. It can build self-confidence in ones atheism/skepticism and establish the fact that it’s okay to not believe in unsupported superstitions and better to be good without god.

Out of these discussions can come some great ideas for the group to take on. Whether it’s mocking an attempt at a documentary or chalking to defend free speech.

Launching the Vancouver Secular Party

Atheism, Elections, Politics, Secularism, Vancouver

After some prodding from friends who read my initial post on the possibility of creating a political party for the 2011 Vancouver civic election, I’ve realized that there is a growing demand for a grassroots secular-based political group.

So with that I’ve created a Facebook goup and WordPress blog (for those not on Facebook), to act as gauges of interest in the project.

The responses that I’ve gotten have fallen into two categories.

First, there’s the people already active in politics who are worried that any new political party will split the vote and give united conservative or religious groups the advantage.

Second, there’s people who are entirely disenfranchised with existing options and see this as a project that they could actually get interested and involved in.

While the first group’s concerns are valid, I have a few responses. First, at the Vancouver civic level, we don’t have to worry as much about splitting the progressive vote, since it represents a large majority of voters. Even further, if we run one (or any number less than a full slate of) candidate(s) for council, then we can still have a progressive voice while also bringing our issues into the discussion. In many cases, third (or fourth) parties are created often as single issue parties just to get their voice to the table (see the Nude Garden Party or the Work Less Party). So I believe there is value in creating these parties.

Of course, even if we don’t create a political party, we can always transform this group into a political lobby group that advocates for secular issues at various levels.

Finally, as I’m already the secretary for both CFI Vancouver and the BC Humanists, the VP External for the Freethought Association of Canada, and the treasurer for the SFU Skeptics (on top of being a full-time masters student in physics), I don’t currently have the time to launch this full time, and will be relying on volunteers coming forward who want to see this project get off the ground.

So with that said, join the Facebook group, check out the blog (and offer to write for it), or email me to help out.

Curing cynical skepticism 2 – The non-active atheists

Atheism, Cynical skepticism, Humanism, Scepticism

[This post is part of a week-long series from July 24-30 about issues within the secular community. The introduction can be read here.]

Yesterday I outlined my basic goals for this series, today I hope to outline the main issue that I’ve had on my mind and a possible first response (that I reject).

This series was partially inspired by a conversation I had the other day with a group of what could be called “non-active” atheists, basically those who don’t believe in a god but don’t see a reason for being involved in the atheist or skeptics community/movement. This had me thinking for the rest of the day: What do groups like the Centre for Inquiry or campus skeptic/atheist really have to offer non-active atheists?

Of course there’s stock answers like what’s written on the CFI Canada website:

We are an educational charity with a legal mandate to educate and provide training to the public in the application of skeptical, secular, rational, and humanistic enquiry through conferences, symposia, lectures, published works and the maintenance of a library, and to develop communities where like-minded individuals can meet and share their experiences. We focus on three broad areas: 1. Religion, Ethics and Society, 2. Pseudoscience, Paranormal and Fringe-science claims, 3. Medicine and Health

But for most people with families, careers and a handful of other hobbies, “conferences, symposia, lectures and published works” will hold little appeal. It’s great to have educational aspects (and I am by no means advocating an end to CFI’s lecture series or conferences), and to inspire inquiry into these topics, but for many people, I get a sense that such events hold little reward. If I had a full-time job, 1.5 kids, exercised 30 minutes per day, and went vacationing every once in a while, I doubt that I would be able (or willing) to find time to attend lectures and conferences.

In Canada, nearly a third of people under 30 are non-religious and in Vancouver the number jumps to almost 50%. This should represent a large target demographic for secular and skeptics groups looking to expand, yet there still seems to be a ceiling much lower than this on both membership and donations.

The “live and let live” mentality

The easy way to dismiss that any issue here exists is to proceed under a “live and let live” philosophy. Basically, this consists of viewing the non-active secularists as generally onside with the issues secularists care about, so there is no real need to preach to the converted. They can be seen as a soft-support base which will support our issues at the voting booth.

Immediately though, I find this view is a bit naive. The first complaint I have is that I’m not convinced that non-active atheists are generally onside with secularists issues. In fact, many view the criticism of religion as needlessly offensive (along the lines of the accommadationists), and have in their own minds a “live and let live” mentality with regards to religious and superstitious people. Of course there’s also the portion of the greater non-religious community that worships “energy” and other obscure forms of mysticism (or whatever Oprah peddles that week).

I think there’s even evidence that the non-active atheists don’t really support us. Many of the non-active atheists would likely disagree with the us as to the severity of the crisis of ignorance in society. Conservatives who preach creationism, homophobia and anti-science rhetoric are continually elected. It’s easy to take solace living outside the United States, but we shouldn’t forget that our Minister of State for Science is a former chiropractor who is unsure how old the Earth is. But the argument of whether we should care about secular issues is a topic for another time (I think so).

Another issue with this mentality is that it dismisses our our potential support base and neglects the requirement of any organization to have members, volunteers and donors. At the very least, without people to come to the events, the lecture halls will be empty and the organization will represent nothing but a social clique. But more on that later.

So for me, the issue with the “live and let live” mentality is dangerous because of the worry that those who seek to establish a society based on superstitions (be they religious or woo-based) will get their way while our potential allies sleep.

Curing cynical skepticism 1 – Introduction

Atheism, Cynical skepticism, Humanism, Scepticism

I tried writing this as a single post, but as it quickly crept past 1000 words, I decided that each individual subsection was worthy of its own post. So over the next week I’m going to try to document and deal with an issue that I want to refer to as cynical skepticism (don’t criticize the name until we actually get to my discussion of that topic).

The topics I plan to cover are (I’ll make these all links once the series is done):

  1. Introductory remarks (Today – Saturday)
  2. Non-active atheists (Sunday)
  3. The cynical skeptics (Monday)
  4. The wrong spin (Tuesday)
  5. Building positive communities (Wednesday)
  6. Diversifying the skeptical market (Thursday)
  7. Concluding thoughts (Friday)

My goal today is to simply introduce the topic and my bare motivation for it. I will admit that part of making this a series post is to try to boost my blogs regularity by prewriting and scheduling a bunch of posts, but that’s more of a secondary reason.

I’ve basically noticed a bit of a trend, or at least a standing issue in the atheist/skeptics communities that is potentially acting as a barrier to entry for otherwise potential members and donors. I’m calling this cynical skepticism, not as an insult or a suggestion that skeptics are mere cynics who reject everything, but to highlight the negative tendency of many of the conversations that happen at meetings.

I should also emphasize that I’m not claiming that I’m not part of the problem or am innocent of any of the criticisms that I plan to outline. My hope is that from this discussion, we, as a community, can identify the direction we want to proceed and from there work to establish positive and constructive freethought communities that appeal to (almost) everyone.

I will also note that, in general, I am not criticizing the activities currently undertaken by any specific freethought group. My goal is more to find specific, constructive avenues along which existing, or new, groups can expand their audience and further the ambitions of a society based on reason, rationality and humanism.

So check back over the course of the series and leave your comments below.

CFI Vancouver on-track

CFI, Personal, Vancouver

A small crowd of about 8 people showed up for the CFI Vancouver volunteer meeting that was held this morning, but a lot of great ideas and plans were generated.

A few key committees and positions were formed, including my new role as secretary (which now has me taking minutes at both BCHA and CFI now).

There’s some great speakers coming up including PZ Myers, Christopher diCarlo and Harriet Hall.

Further, Sonia and I will be launching our freethinker book club on August 14th at The Grind Cafe on Main St. We’ll be discussing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s first book Infidel, so grab a copy from a bookstore or the library soon. We’ll follow this up with Nomad in the future, but Physics of Star Trek (spare copies available through CFI Vancouver) will likely be for September and potentially The Armageddon Factor in October leading up to a potential talk by author and journalist Marci McDonald.

Things are definitely looking promising.